There are several well-known rotary dental polishing applicator tools for applying abrasive polishing compositions to teeth and tooth restoration materials. Such tools include applicator tips such as rubber prophy cups, bristle prophy brushes, and felt or felt-like bobs and wheels. While many of these tools have been long used in dental laboratory practice to provide the final finish to tooth restoration materials, over the past several years, dentists have adopted "chair-side" techniques in their offices for fine polishing of tooth and tooth restoration materials within the patient's oral cavity.
While generally felt wheels and bristle brushes have been very popular for laboratory use, their size and configuration limits their applicability for some intra-oral applications. Similar limitations are true regarding the other prior types of polishing applicator tools which cannot effectively be used in the more difficult access areas such as interproximal spaces adjacent to the gingiva.
The material used for the polishing applicator tips has heretofore been of a relatively soft nature or is provided with an interrupted surface to which the polishing composition will tend to adhere and which will not damage or otherwise undesirably alter the finish of the tooth surface. However, these materials, while satisfactory in larger sizes and shapes for polishing the larger, exposed tooth surfaces, are not well-suited to a reduction in size which would permit effective, safe access to the more difficult to reach tooth surfaces.
As abrasive polishing techniques using diamond polishing compositions have moved into intra-oral applications, there has been an unsolved need to develop new methods and new applicator tips to more fully and effectively permit polishing of any area of the whole tooth surface to the desired mirror-like finish.